Activating Circularity Throughout the City
There’s no reason we can’t use vacant land to jumpstart circular infrastructure.
The City of Philadelphia’s Department of Public Property and related land holding agencies own 10,000+ vacant lots located all around the city. These lots are often overgrown with weeds, filled with litter, dumping grounds for construction waste, and potentially dangerous. The city is forced to spend our tax dollars on cleaning and maintaining these lots, and they can’t keep up. Circular Philadelphia views the city’s vacant lots as an opportunity to increase circularity throughout Philadelphia while building businesses.
Are you a Circular Philadelphia member who owns or manages a business or organization that uses waste as a resource, reuses materials, or helps to regenerate natural systems as part of the circular economy?
Are you a member of a community organization who wants to see something beautiful on a vacant lot near you?
If so, and you are in need of space to host or expand your business or do a community project, then Circular Philadelphia’s vacant land use program may be a good fit for your needs.
What is Circular Philadelphia’s vacant land use program?
Circular Philadelphia has created a program through which circular businesses or community groups can receive guidance and technical assistance to work with the city to temporarily use these vacant lots to develop pilot projects to expand their businesses. Here is a map of the initial vacant lots Circular Philadelphia and partners have identified as potential opportunities on residential and industrial/commercial land.
If your business or community group has been selected by the Circular Philadelphia Vacant Land Working Group to receive assistance, we will work with your organization to connect with the right people in City government and engage with local legislators and community to follow a process to successfully secure a temporary land use agreement for your pilot project.
How to apply for assistance with securing temporary land use:
To get started, please fill out the Expression of Interest form below to find out if you’re a qualified applicant and tell us a bit more about your project.
If you’re looking for a longer term land use or more info about acquiring land for community use specifically for urban agriculture and gardening, please visit the Grounded in Philly website for more information.
Vacant Land Expression of Interest – Commercial
Expression of interest for residential use can be found below.
Vacant Land Expression of Interest – Residential
Vacant Land Initiatives
Vacant Land Activation
By creating a transparent and easy to use system for businesses that want to use vacant lots to increase economic opportunity and community groups that want to improve quality of life in neighborhoods, we can prevent illegal dumping and strengthen our city.
Vacant Land Working Group
The vacant land working group focuses on creating and increasing opportunities for circular businesses by leveraging vacant land in Philadelphia. With over 10,000 publicly owned vacant lots, there is a great opportunity to leverage this underutilized resource in Philadelphia to support circular businesses. Duties of the working group will be to draft policy proposals for temporary vacant land use, match vacant parcels with circular businesses’ needs, work with City Council and land holding agencies to create land use agreements and ensure that community is engaged in project development so they can partake in the benefits.
Current projects and areas of focus:
- Working with city land agencies on vacant land proposals for circular economy pilot projects